Monday, December 6, 2010

Scary thought: I’m fully convinced that anybody can get away with murder one time. I’ve made this argument to my friends and family for years, but last night I lost a ton of sleep because I started thinking about it again (probably because I get too emotionally attached when I watch Dexter). Let me explain.

First of all, when I say that anybody can get away with one murder, I obviously don’t mean that you can just walk in on your ex-girlfriend and her new man and just stab him in the balls with no consequence. So please, put the knife down and keep reading before you do something you’ll forever regret. What I really mean is that anybody can get away with one random murder.

Think about it. When cops are investigating a murder, there are always three things they seriously consider– motive, evidence, and possible witnesses. Keeping this in mind, (we need to give our hypothetical murderer a name – “Evan” will do the trick) Evan could get away with murder, provided that he has absolutely no connection to the victim, he doesn’t leave a trail, and nobody sees him do it (or at least nobody gets a good look at him). This means that if Evan was to get bloodthirsty for some reason, all he’d have to do is break into a random house in the middle of nowhere (also known as the rural Midwest), unleash a meat cleaver on whoever he sees, and then take the weapon with him as he quickly flees the scene.

So long as the entire crime is random and unpredictable, and as long as he has no criminal record (so DNA testing can’t nail him), I’m convinced the cops would never figure out that Evan did it. This, more than anything else, is why I was so terrified of Christopher Lloyd in Dennis The Menace when I was little. Dude was a drifter who just jumped off a train in Dennis’ town. He could have easily slit Mr. Wilson’s throat and anally penetrated Dennis with his own slingshot, then jumped backed on the next train and disappeared into oblivion. There’s no way in hell the cops would’ve figured that one out.

Now, I know some of you might think that bringing this up makes me some dark, creepy guy. My response to this is twofold – A) this is what a dark, creepy guy looks like, and B) I’m not bringing it up because I plan on killing someone, but rather because I’m scared of someone doing it to me. It’s terrifying to know that some hobo could stalk me for a few days and gut out my insides while I’m sleeping without the cops having any idea of where to even start looking.

Even worse, “Evan” could stage the murder to look like a suicide and the cops wouldn’t investigate it at all. This is why I’m adamant about my concept of a non-suicide note. It’s basically a note that happy, mentally-healthy people write that says, “I assure you that I would never commit suicide, so if it looks like I did, please know that someone murdered me and tried to cover it up. Please investigate this and don’t just assume things.”

Obviously I’d ideally want the cops to find my note immediately. But I also wouldn’t mind if they didn’t, so long as my murder happened when my wife was pregnant and my unborn son found the note 20 years later. That way there would be a 100% chance he would feel obligated to avenge my death, which would be all sorts of badass because it’d more than likely mean he would somehow turn into a superhero. And when you think about it, having your child avenge your death and become a superhero is all a father could ever really ask for.

Now that I’ve got you all paranoid and creeped out, let’s ease things up a little bit by looking at pictures of guys with mustaches.

There’s no way you’re falling asleep tonight.

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My original plan for this contest was to pick out a few of my favorites and have the Trillion Man March vote on a winner. But when you all started sending in your stache pics, it became obvious to me that I couldn’t just pick a handful. After all, I’m the same guy who used to like emo music, turtlenecks, and Rick Reilly (to be fair, though, there’s no denying that ESPN Rick Reilly is a completely different person than SI Rick Reilly was), which is another way of saying I’m clearly not that great at making decisions, so picking just a few staches out of the 29 that were sent in was always going to be an impossible task for me.

So here’s what we’re going to do. I’ve decided to post every picture that was emailed to me (except for a few that were pics of guys with full beards) and I’m going to leave it up to the Trillion Man March to decide which staches are the best. If you see a mustache you like, leave a comment in the comment section of this blog entry and it will serve as a nomination. After a week or so, I’ll tally up the nominations and post the five or six best again and we’ll have a final vote to decide the winner. Remember that anything can be taken into account when judging these mustaches – creativity, manliness, or the lack of both if your heart desires (I think a couple guys could end up winning just because the TMM will pity them).

Just so we’re clear, it’s okay to nominate more than one stache, but please don’t be a Singler and nominate 20 or something. Also, to make the identification process easier, I’ve decided to assign each picture a name of a great American hero (the name appears ABOVE the picture it corresponds with – I’ll say it again: the name appear ABOVE the picture it corresponds with). When you leave a comment with your nominations, list the names of the great American heroes that correspond to the pictures. So instead of writing, “I like both the guy who looks like a child molester and the guy with the fu manchu/soul patch combo,” write, “I like Rod Beck and Lee Greenwood.” Hopefully that makes sense.

By the way, don’t forget that the ultimate winner of the contest gets a CLUB TRIL or FUNDAMENTALS MONTAGE!!! shirt, as well as a pack of Barbasol shaving cream. In other words, there’s a lot at stake, so please take this as seriously as I know you will. Like Derek Anderson said: “You think this is funny, but I take this s*** serious. Real serious.”

Now on to the staches…

FRANCIS SCOTT KEY

LEX LUGER

LEE GREENWOOD

RICHARD BELDING

GENERAL GEORGE S. PATTON

CHRIS MULLIN

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER

WALTER SOBCHAK

ABRAHAM ZAPRUDER

BRIAN BOSWORTH

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

HOLDEN CAULFIELD

BENNY “THE JET” RODRIGUEZ

JOHN STOCKTON

ARTHUR FONZARELLI

WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON

DR. JONAS SALK

CARL SPACKLER

ROD BECK

CLINT EASTWOOD

GEN. WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN

TRENT WALKER

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Edit: I just realized that Ernest Hemingway took this picture in December of 2007. Clearly he didn't follow the rules, so I'm disqualifying him from the contest. However, his mustache is unfathomably manly, so I'll leave the picture on here.

SALVATORE GIUNTA

JOHN WAYNE

BATMAN

NICOLAS CAGE

CHARLIE CONWAY

LUTHER VANDROSS

God bless America. __________________________________________________

Now that college basketball is in full swing, the race for The Belt is getting much more heated. There’s a new name atop the leaderboard this time around (and a few names added to the list as well), but it’s too early to pick a favorite as there’s still a lot of basketball to be played (or in the case of these guys, not be played). Here are the current standings.

I still say that one of the Purdue guys will end up winning it, but my dark horse pick is Nate Schwarze of Rice, mostly because he put up an 11 trillion in his last game. Yes, you read that right. Eleven. Trillion.

What a badass. ___________________________________________________

Your awesome YouTube celebrates the holiday season and was sent in to me by Marc L. There’s your shout-out, Marc. And here’s your video.

Club Trillion Shirts

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